Cheti Chand · Jhulelal Jayanti Festival The Sindhi new year and the birthday of Jhulelal, the water god the Sindhis also call Amarlal and Uderolal and hold to be Varuna of the Indus.

English

Cheti Chand · Jhulelal Jayanti

सिंधी

चेटी चंड

Only the names actually in use are listed. A blank script is not an omission: the day may simply not be kept there, or be kept under a different festival's name.

1. Thursday, 8 April 2027
2. Tuesday, 28 March 2028
3. Sunday, 15 April 2029

See the whole year on the calendar →

Worked out for Chennai, Lahiri ayanamsa. A date is a function of the place: set yours above and the next three come back for where you are.

The Sindhi new year and the birthday of Jhulelal, the water god the Sindhis also call Amarlal and Uderolal and hold to be Varuna of the Indus. The account is that when Mirkhshah of Thatta gave the Hindus of Sindh forty days to convert, they kept forty days of prayer and fasting on the bank of the river, and at the end of them a child was born at Nasarpur who grew to turn the ruler from it. The day is kept with the Behrana Sahib: a brass pot of water with a lit jyot standing on it, a coconut, dates and sugar on the tray around it, carried in procession to the nearest river, lake, well or sea and set on the water. The chhej is danced along the way and the panchang of the new year is read at the darbar.

Deity

Jhulelal, Varuna

Kind

Festival Days of celebration: the house is decorated, a feast is cooked and the temple is visited.

Chet Shukla Dwitiya at sunrise, the second of the bright fortnight; the Behrana Sahib goes to the water in the evening. The day is spoken of as the first sighting of the new year's moon, and a panchang that reads it at the evening moon rather than at sunrise would move it by a day in a year where the Dwitiya begins after sunset.

Sunrise 06:01, sunset 18:21, UTC+5.5. These are the instants the rule is read at, not the temple's own puja times, which every temple prints for itself.

No fast is kept. The cooking is vegetarian in most houses, and the tahiri, sweet rice with sugar and cardamom, is made and shared as prasad.

The same new moon opens the year for half of India, but a day earlier: Chaitra Shukla Pratipada is Ugadi in the Deccan, Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra, Navreh in Kashmir and the Vikram Samvat new year in the north, and the Sindhi new year is the Dwitiya after it. So the year NUMBER turns on one morning and the new year FESTIVAL is on the next, which is true of no other tradition here. Ulhasnagar, Ajmer, Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore, Ahmedabad and Mumbai hold the largest processions, and the diaspora darbars from Dubai to Hong Kong hold their own.

The dates above are the Sindhi reckoning, because that is the calendar this key belongs to. Switch the tradition on the calendar page to see how another one dates the same day.

Every date here is computed from the Sun and Moon for the place entered, by the rule printed beside it. A printed panchangam can differ by a day where an almanac reads a tithi at a different instant, and a family's own custom always comes first. Where the practice genuinely varies, the text says so rather than choosing for you.